Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs

Magazine. I am joined today by Jonathan Taplin. He is the author of the book Move Fast and Break Things,

but most recently he is also the author of the new book, The End of Reality, How Four Billionaires

Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto, available from

Public Affairs.

Jonathan Taplin is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of

Southern California.

Jonathan Taplin, thank you so much for joining us on current affairs today.

Good to be here.

Okay, so if people don't know about your career and background, you have done many things

in your life from tour manager for Bob Dylan, producer for

Martin's Grossezy, documentary filmmaker, academic advisor to the government of Catalonia

at one point.

Many, many things you have done in your life.

Most recently, however, you have turned your attention to writing a couple of books that

are focused on Silicon Valley.

So I want to ask you why you as someone who has done so many things, I get the sense from

these books that you have turned your attention to this particular subject out of a sense

of urgency and a sense of fear. So can you tell us a bit about

why a person with your background turned to this area of focus at this point in your life?

Well, it started in 2015 with my worry that the big tech barons didn't care about art at all and were basically destroying

the music business, doing what they could to destroy journalism.

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